New York County -in N.Y. City- to Tuesday, June 30th - An adult-plumaged Little Blue Heron was continuing to be seen from Randalls Island looking mostly with scopes, off towards the north and also with patience waiting for potential fly-bys to occur. Some good-fun descriptive accounts of sightings, or even some no-luck experiences, with this little blue herald of herons fort this humble county, in those have beat on signal drums for the birdervillage.
At the same time, multiples of American Oystercatchers have shown on some recent days, also scoping for the most part and looking distantly off the northeast shore of Randalls. On Saturday, 6-27, at least 2 Glossy Ibis were noticed also moving past, not stopping, but photod in flight. These are all birds found with some luck, patience and often some of both, and thanks to b. mclellan for the initial find of Little Blue Heron in particular off Randalls back on 6-22, with multiple observers on some subsequent watches, and thanks to A. Cunningham for that most-recent Ibis find. A fairly wide variety of birds are now nesting in the county, and some known and less-common nesters for the county include - Ruby-throated Hummingbird, Killdeer, Common Tern, Green Heron, Monk Parakeet, Eastern Wood-Pewee, Willow Flycatcher, Eastern Phoebe, Great Crested Flycatcher, Fish Crow, Common Raven, Cliff Swallow, Blue-gray Gnatcatcher, Eastern Towhee, Orchard Oriole, Common Yellowthroat, Northern Yellow Warbler, Indigo Bunting, and perhaps a few additional species in the county which are rarer as nesting birds as compared with the many migrants that were moving north over this spring. More than half of the birds noted in this paragraph have nested this spring-summer at Central Park, as well as some in other Manhattan parks. Ruby-throated Hummingbirds have been regular to daily in at least 5 discrete locations on Manhattan island, and a number of these could be representative of breeding-attempts, with two already definite by now. While uncommon to rare here, the breeding success of the latter species has been noted for past years, usually, if success occurred, with not a lot of notice. One small complicator in these sightings as summer continues - we can have returnee or non-breeders of hummingbirds making their way south, slowly or not, in all the parts of calendar-summer. And of course, odd stray or vagrant hummingbird species could show at any time to our region, and the most of all by all past reports, in the second half of a calendar year. Female and male Ruby-throateds are present at several parks including Central and Fort Tryon Parks in Manhattan into June 30th. Both Yellow-billed and Black-billed Cuckoos were seen in the past week, in Central Park in particular. Migrants moving on are otherwise now-few. A very few warblers have lingered aside from the two regularly-seen spp. of summer in this county - N. Yellow Warblers and Common Yellowthroats, plus American Redstarts - the lingerers include very recent re-sightings of Blackpoll Warbler, Black-and-white Warbler, and Ovenbird - these last 3 spp. are not expected at all as breeders. A potential breeder in the county or at least in N.Y. City, American Redstart is also, as with a number of other warbler species, occasionally a rather-early returneee going south in summer. At least 5 of these warbler species have continued in Central Park, but some species might be ongoing in almost any odd-spots in the county, and not being found as the numbers of birders overall are diminished in this high-summer period, with lowered migrations. The six warbler species noted in this paragraph are all still in this county and also all but one are still in Central Park to June 30. Over the last few days of the weekend to now, more than 80 species were noted from N.Y. County, plus at least one typical hybrid, the Mallard-Am. Black Duck hybrid-types which may be very regular. For all of the month of June, just over 120 species of wild, free-flying birds were noted and also confirmed for species-ID in this month, however the number may have been higher with some possible birds not fully-confirmed, for example, in eBird review. Also present were at least a few additional hybrids, such as the unusual-to-be-noticed Mourning Warbler-Common Yellowthroat cross which was documented in Central Park in this month. - - - - - That hybrid-combination had been noted by some of us in N.Y. City even decades earlier - including journal notes in The Kingbird of the time and correspondence with a few experts on American-hemisphere warblers, and some of the less-commonly seen hybrid-cross and at that time, even -then- seen as an inter-generic hybrid, now the two species are placed in the same genus, a change from the last decade or so, even if affinities were suspected longer ago. A modest article in the NY State Ornithological journal The Kingbird appeared in Vol. 49, No. 2, at pages 122-25, under principal author A.C. Vallely of New York and myself - we had discovered an individual of the likely hybrid-offspring of Mourning Warbler x Common Yellowthroat at Prospect Park, Brooklyn -Kings Co.- NY on May 11 in 1991. This was reviewed in part at that time by Kenneth Parkes and there was also input from a number of other ornithologists and researchers. By today in 2026, we have many examples of this pairing, and good discussions both in the literature and on somewhat more informal basis. In a nice blog post, David Sibley made a not of his own presumptive sighting, and subsequent painting of a bird of this pairing. Mr. Sibleys observation and his painting came years later, well after A.C. Vallely had made a fine small color sketch of the Prospect Park Brooklyn hybrid warbler, first sketched up from field observations and then painted nearby later in the same day-night. Thanks are also due to, among others, Douglass H. Morse, the biologist-ecologist with a chair in evolutionary biology at Brown University, now emeritus, formerly at L.S.U., and with books published via Harvard - from there, the author of American Warblers: an Ecological and Behavioral Perspective, in 1989, a fine read, still worth a look if one finds this in a well-stocked library. At the time of the 1991 sighting of that then-quite surprising hybrid in Brooklyn, we had some personal comms. with Dr. Morse. His book on warblers included a portion on hybrid-pairs in some warblers of the Americas. - - - On David Sibleys blog posts the date for his notes on -An Interesting Warbler- come at May 28, 2015, and his lovely small painting done from life, at Concord, Massachusetts is featured as a part of his blog of that date. Among many many other locally-nesting migratory or resident birds, plus visitant species, we continue to host a Wild Turkey at Battery Park in lower Manhattan, and wild she is, not always the easiest to locate, on some days unreported there. Good birding - stay safe in extreme heat, and check up on the elders and any more-vulnerable of people. Tom Fiore manhattan -- NYSbirds-L List Info: Visit: http://LISTS.cornell.edu for more information Posting Address: [email protected] Archives: The Mail Archive: https://www.mail-archive.com/[email protected]/maillist.html Sightings: Please submit your observations to eBird at http://www.ebird.org --
